


bursting rains in august

by torrentialTriages



Series: feels like we only go backwards [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Unorthodox Job Screening Methods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:34:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: Maxwell, after Hyperion.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 1) title taken from passion pit's "two veils to hide my face" 2) it was cut due to gabriel confirming, while i was writing this, that jacobi and maxwell didnt overlap at mit but trans jacobi hcs are my lifeblood 3) i hc maxwell (and jacobi) as autistic, i am autistic so this is why my writing may seem a little weird/disjointed im sorry 4) i know nothing about guns (eiffel voice) _please_ save my ass

When Alana agrees to follow Kepler down the rabbit hole, he takes her to yet another building (she liked the self-driving car better than his driving, she notes maybe a little petulantly), nondescript redstone, maybe three stories. It is hard to find anything particularly worth noting about the building, except for the slow shiver that crawls up Maxwell's spine. Awe? Paranoia? Fear? She doesn't know.

Inside is pristine. The surfaces are all practically luminous. The receptionist tapping away at her keyboard has nary a hair out of place. Kepler acknowledges her with a brief nod, but otherwise he beckons for Maxwell to follow his lead down the forked hallway.

Through a heavily secured door, wire netting in its window unsettling, they reach an ominous corridor, half-lit ambiance a heavy reminder of the ill poise Maxwell felt hours after everyone else had left and it was up to her to lock the labs up when she left, a solitary ghost in the intermittent fluorescent lighting. Walking through with Kepler now is almost no different.

Maxwell fiddles with her hands. Should... should they be making conversation? She's not good with knowing what to do in situations, similar or otherwise. For all of her intellect, it gnaws at her that she isn't as flexible with humans as she is with machines, with synthetic people better than her fleshy peers. Sometimes she wishes she could rewire other people to understand her, to generate a more synchronized effect within a group. Common thought would make so many things more efficient.

A man not much older than her crosses their path and pauses in the hallway, half-eaten sub sandwich never quite making it to his mouth. His eyebrows raise a fraction. "Maj- Lieutenant Colonel, are you... gonna... did you flirt with her too?"

_Too?_

Kepler brushes away his question like he'd expected it. "Don't worry about it, Jacobi. I'm doing nothing of the sort."

Jacobi eyes them skeptically. His gaze is searching, scrying her face, and Maxwell doesn't know what he's looking for. It makes her uneasy, that she doesn't know what to show him. She keeps her face politely neutral.

"I showed her one of our developmental AIs," Kepler adds, a little conspiratorially, and Jacobi's confusion shows plain on his face, breaking the moment.

"Oooo..... kay?"

Kepler acts like this is of no concerning matter to him. He puts a hand on Maxwell's back and nods firmly to Jacobi (Jacobi's eyes narrow slightly). They move on.

"You can't flirt with me," Maxwell says to the darkening corridor. "I won't accept it."

Kepler's smile is implied. "Oh, perish the thought. _I_ wasn't flirting with you."

"... Okay." She inhales through her nose. "Okay."

They move on. A right, and then a left.

"Ever fired a pistol before, Dr. Maxwell?" Kepler asks genially after a few meters, in the same tone of voice her coworkers used to ask each other how their weekend had been.

She gives him a quick glance. If their information was really as thorough as he'd flaunted, he'd know the answer already, wouldn't he? "No.”

"No?"

"No." Does he want her to admit it herself? "Just rifles."

He gives her a lopsided smug grin she does not see, but hears. "Oh, we know. It's in your file." _Dammit._

They walk on, and Maxwell struggles to think of something to say. Does Kepler dislike the silence? Does he feel like it weighs on him like the gloominess of the half-lit lights, or does he find it comfortable, buoying him as they walk?

"So," Maxwell ventures. "Where are we going?"

Kepler glances at her. "I'm going to answer a question I've had for a while, Dr. Maxwell."

"And what is that?"

"I know your track record with rifles. Now I want to see whether you can one, handle smaller firearms, and two, respond to any orders I give you. I know you're a great fit for my department, Doctor, but it's always better to be safe than sorry."

She ponders this. Kepler pushes open a door, and Maxwell is greeted with natural sunlight as they step into the large shooting range.

There is only one lane set up, with a single 9mm handgun set on a table. As they approach, Kepler beckons Maxwell to put on safety glasses and earplugs, which they both do, and to pick up the pistol, which she does. She notes that it looks like an version of the handgun her Uncle John had brought with him many times while hunting, before he'd modified it. Never had the opportunity to use it, but the man had treated it like his most prized possession (it probably was). Memories of the woods, of peering intently, scanning for movement, of Uncle John giving young Alana a rundown of the finer points of his pistol, showing her all six bullets splayed out in his palm gleaming in the filtered forest light, chitter at the back of her skull for attention.

The target stands placidly in the range, a good 30 meters off or so, in a shaft of midday sunlight. The shadows around Maxwell and Kepler are cool, a comforting shade of umber.

"It's the same principle," Kepler tells her, muffled through the earplugs, a little redundantly. He flashes her a grin. "Don't worry, I loaded it myself." She nods, uncertain as to how to posture herself.

 _You can_ do _this, Alana._

"Just think about Hyperion," comes Kepler's voice, smooth despite its volume and faintly honeyed, large hands swiftly guiding Maxwell into place. "Don't think too much about the firing itself. Just line up your barrel, a little higher, and...”

Maxwell thinks of the AI in the basement. Thinks of high school rifling practice. Thinks of hunting with her father and brother and uncles. Thinks of the projects she'd left unfinished at the Nash. Thinks of the endless legal papers that finally made her family silent. Thinks again, of all those unlimited possibilities in Hyperion, humming along in that laboratory basement. Takes a deep breath.

Squeezes.

The bullet punches through the paper just below the bullseye, leaving behind nothing but a clean puncture, the cordite haze drifting lazily from the barrel, and Maxwell's thundering heart. She gingerly lowers the pistol.

"Good," Kepler says. "Now, again. Four more times."

"Yessir," she responds smartly, raising the pistol. Kepler does not move to help position her.

Tap. Pause. Inhale. Tap. Less of a pause. Exhale. Tap. Tap. The bullets pierce the target, spraying in more or less the same area within the rings.

She looks back at Kepler expectantly, lowering the pistol again. He spreads his arms.

"Now I want you to shoot _me_."

Maxwell is suddenly hyperaware of how empty the shooting range is. "I- Excuse me?"

"Just shoot me, Dr. Maxwell," Kepler continues, smiling as if he were cajoling a young child into doing something irrationally unpleasing, like going to bed early. "Anywhere on my body. I'll be standing on the range. I trust your judgement. Oh," he adds, an afterthought. "I'd rather you avoided my head, though."

She gapes, then gives him an unsteady, "... Sure." What is he _thinking?_

"Excellent." Kepler, surprisingly nimble, vaults the fence separating them from the expanse of the range, then gives her a cheery wink. "Whenever you're ready, Dr. Maxwell."

She nods tightly as he strolls across the lawn to the target, spinning around to face her with his hands clasped neatly behind his back, 15 meters away. Maxwell categorically scans her mind for what to do next.

She runs through the list of what medical knowledge she remembers. _Don't aim at the head. Duh, got it. Not his torso either. That means... you have to aim for an extremity. Arms? No, too small a target._ She closes her eyes, inhaling then exhaling through her nose. _Aim for his legs. Femoral artery's there, but it's the best you can do. Aim low, aim out._  She opens them again. Flexes her fingers on the stock. She gives Kepler a nod, which he returns, and she runs through the mental checklist of posture habits one more time.

Was she really going to do this? If he died, she wouldn't have to go through any more screening inanity. She nearly laughs at the absurdity of the thought.

She aims, willing the slight tremor in her hands to still. She points the barrel at Kepler's thigh.

An inhale. Her breath catches. She fires.

_Click._

Huh?

A chill grows over her like frost, or the sun's light obscured by clouds, a growing distrust (of Kepler? It is hard to tell right now) that manifests like ink swirling in clear water. Against all common sense, she pulls the trigger again.

_Click._

What the fuck?

Kepler gives her a cheery wave. "Something wrong, Dr. Maxwell?" he calls across the range.

"It's not firing," she answers, frustration creeping into her voice.

"Oh, I know.”

 _You know?_  "You fixed this," she shouts to him, half a question, half a given. A fuzzy feeling of alienation from her body sweeps through her as her mind scans the information available to figure out exactly what is going on. She flips the pistol in her hand, scrabbling to eject the cartridge, not seeing Kepler's vague smug smirk.

Maxwell grips the cartridge in her fist, the edges digging into her palm. She frowns at it, mind clouding with questions, answers in a fog beyond their tangled paths.

"Dr. Maxwell?" She jerks her head up. Kepler had come up in front of her. He extends his hand, then appears to rethink it, gesturing for her to put the gun and cartridge down, which she does, hands not quite trembling. He laughs softly, re-extending his hand to her. “Congratulations. You passed the screening.”

“You fi- you rigged this.” She wants to hear it from him.

“I did,” he muses. “But you did wonderfully with what you’d gotten, didn’t you?” He winks. “Thank you for trusting me, by the way.”

Maxwell lets out a breath and the tension in her arms that she hadn’t realized she had been carrying in her this whole time. Her hands feel tingly and fuzzy, and she looks down to see that they are shaking. She looks back up at Kepler.

Kepler smiles at her, like the sun on a November morning. "Well?"

She shakes out her hands, and laughs, reflexively. The chilly feeling has not left her, and in a split-second haze of premonition she realizes that this is the moment where that feeling will never, ever quite leave her. "Let's get to the AIs, shall we?"

**Author's Note:**

> im @drakanekurashiki on tumblr hit me up!


End file.
